Real Efficiency at Scale with Sean Varley

Anne Currie is joined by Sean Varley, Chief Evangelist and VP of Business Development at Ampere Computing, a leader in building energy-efficient, cloud-native processors. They unpack the energy demands of AI, why power caps and utilization matter more than raw compute, and how to rethink metrics like performance-per-rack for a greener digital future. Sean also discusses Ampere’s role in the AI Platform Alliance, the company’s partnership with Rakuten, and how infrastructure choices impact the climate trajectory of AI. Learn more about our people: Anne Currie: LinkedIn | Website Sean Varley: LinkedIn | Website

Find out more about the GSF: The Green Software Foundation Website Sign up to the Green Software Foundation Newsletter

Resources: Ampere Cloud Native Processors – Ultra-efficient ARM-based chips powering cloud and edge workloads [02:30] AI Platform Alliance – Coalition promoting energy-efficient AI hardware [04:55] Ampere + Rakuten Case Study – Real-world deployment with 36% less energy per rack [05:50] Green Software Foundation Real Time Cloud Project – Standardizing real-time carbon data from cloud providers [15:10] Software Carbon Intensity Specification – Measuring the carbon intensity of software [17:45] FinOps Foundation – Financial accountability in cloud usage, with sustainability guidance [24:20] Kepler Project – Kubernetes power usage monitoring [26:30] LLaMA Models by Meta [29:10] Anthropic’s Claude AI [31:25] Anne Currie, Sara Bergman & Sarah Hsu: Building Green Software [34:00]

If you enjoyed this episode then please either: Follow, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts Follow and rate on Spotify Watch our videos on The Green Software Foundation YouTube Channel! Connect with us on Twitter, Github and LinkedIn!

TRANSCRIPT BELOW: Sean Varley: Because at the end of the day, if you want to be more sustainable, then just use less electricity. That's the whole point, right. Chris Adams: Hello, and welcome to Environment Variables, brought to you by the Green Software Foundation. In each episode, we discuss the latest news and events surrounding green software. On our show, you can expect candid conversations with top experts in their field who have a passion for how to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions of software. I'm your host, Chris Adams. Anne Currie: Hello and welcome to the World of Environment Variables, where we bring you the latest news and updates from the world of sustainable software. So I'm your guest host today. It's not, you're not hearing the usual dulcet tones of Chris Adams. My name is Anne Currie. And today we'll be diving into a pressing and timely topic, how to scale AI infrastructure sustainably in a world where energy constraints are becoming a hard limit. And that means that we are gonna be, have to be a little bit more clever and a little bit more careful when we choose the chips we run on. So it's tempting to believe that innovation alone will lead us towards greener compute, but in reality, real sustainability gains happen when efficiency becomes a business imperative when performance per watt, cost and carbon footprint are all measured and all have weight. So, that's where companies like Ampere come in, with cloud native energy efficient approaches to chip design. They're rethinking how we power the AI boom, not just faster but smarter. It's a strategy that aligns directly with Green Software Foundation's mission to reduce carbon emissions from the software lifecycle, particularly in the cloud. So in this episode, we'll explore what this looks like at scale and what we can learn from Ampere's approach to real world efficiency. So what did it take? What does it take to make an AI ready infrastructure that's both powerful, effective, and sustainable? Let's find out. And today we have with us Sean Varley from Ampere. So Sean, welcome to the show. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself? Sean Varley: Yeah, absolutely Anne, and thanks first for having me on the podcast. I'm a big fa